This setting is a great alternative to the usual fare. It is a dark world, cut off from all gods save one evil world-dominating power that has the peoples of Eredane living in fear. Izrador's church of shadow is the ruling power and uses orc minions to terrorize the populace into submission. Elves and dwarves are hunted while humans are enslaved. The "veil of shadow" has game impacts on magic and the oppressive society makes arms contraband.

Likes: Oppressive setting, lending to constant harassment for the players from the ruling powers. Numerous adventures rise out of "rebel" activity. New mechanics for magic that allow any player to practice some magic. Interesting new monsters and great adaptations of existing ones, especially undead and dragons. Somewhat interesting new base classes.

Dislikes: Class options are fairly limited, though they are expanded with heroic paths and a vast array of prcs. Players might tire of the restrictive setting. There's some ideas that seem a bit too familiar to other fantasy literature (Izrador to Sauron, the night kings to the nazgul, the veil and the fell remind me of the Sword of Truth).

The Movie: I really saw this as a bonus since it was only an additional $5. The movie is reasonably well produced with mediocre actors and a fairly engaging story. The ending is a bit anti-climactic but it does give you a feel for the oppressive nature of the setting and certainly measures up to other genre movies, not that that's saying much :)

Overall: A quality stand alone campaign setting, or perhaps more valuable for those who are just looking for interesting ideas to incorporate into a custom setting; Midnight includes a rich history and well laid out setting.

Firstly, I have to say that the film has very impressive production values for the budget. Not only is this a remarkably pretty film, and you can tell it's a labour of love, and since this is one of the best settings for D&D to ever come out, and definitely one that deserves updating to 4e, I'm going to feel really bad for bringing up the following:

The file format is the 'apple-only' .mov type. I had never heard of such a thing, but it meant I had to use VLC to play it. Not a roadblock to watching it, but unhelpful- doubly so since it meant I had a lot trouble streaming it to the Xbox to watch it on the TV.

This film is terrible and feels like it has nothing to do with Midnight. Sorry, but it's just a waste of time - and it's not just a poor film, but a poor Midnight film. The whole story misses what I felt were the most interesting elements of the RPG setting in favour of, ultimately, a bad monster movie.
It has a painfully disjointed pace that makes the whole film drag, and beyond a few scenes which are interesting, I found myself not caring one bit what happened next. You get the impression that there's a larger story going on, but it's infuriating that your not told any of it and have to assume the reasoning behind most of the plot.
The main flaw in the film, though, is the characters. While the acting is OK, the characters obediently shuffle through the obvious plot to its conclusion, making decisions almost entirely for plot purposes. Also, some characters and character abilities get conveniently forgotten to make things more dramatic.

And finally I won't spoil anything, but if every sprawling dungeon, library and bottomless-chasm-with-rickety-rope-bridge was really under that town, the whole place should have collapsed inward years ago.

On the plus side, I get an original 4e Midnight adventure and the original game in PDF, which was definitely appreciated. I haven't looked through the adventure properly, except to gasp in horror at the vardatch weapon stats, but anything new for a Midnight RPG is awesome.

tl;dr: The frustrating afternoon I spent allowing the file to be watched on the TV was wasted by the film itself. Avoid.

For $14.95 this is one hell of a good package. First and foremost, you get a feature-length movie with great production values. Second, you get the core rulebook for the Midnight campaign setting, which at 400+ pages would have been a huge value at the price by itself. You also get the movie scripts and a free adventure module set in the town in which the movie is based. Wonderfully good value.

The movie: The film is really a long pilot for what I hope will become a tv series; the SyFy channel would go great with this. If youare not familiar with midnight you get a brief rundown in the film; thousands of years ago the god of evil was cast out of heaven onto the world of Aryth, but in so doing a Veil was raised that prevented the gods from interfering with the world in any way...but also cut off the dark god Izrador and everyone else on Aryth from leaving the world in any way, including through death. Three times Izrador rose up against the people of Aryth, and the third time he won the battle. It has been 100 years of a world in Shadow.

Though the plot is really about the rise of two diametrically opposed heroes -- one for good and one for evil -- most of the movies focus goes to the evil legate Mag Kiln. And it's great that it does, but it's one of the few movies that really shows things from the bad guy's perspective. Charles Hubbell is excellent as the dark priest destined for great power. His companion Kruce is an interesting and likeable character,despite being on Team Evil. Chuzara the young legate that goes to Blackweir with Mag Kiln is OK as a character, but she makes up for it in good looks. ;)

Anyone familiar with the campaign setting with enjoy all of the references to the gaming world. Being that the movie is made by the company that created the game system maybe that's obvious but worth pointing out. I just wish we had the chance to see more of the orcs and some of the Fell in action. There isn't a lot of combat or flashy magic in use, possibly because of budget constraints, but what we do see looks good.

Midnight 2nd Edition Core Rules: Midnight has become my favorite campaign setting over the years, to the point I've made the definite SRD for it (http://darknessfalls.leaderdesslok.com). Having this massive volume in PDF at a more-than-reasonable price is fantastic. Only down side is that at over 400 pages it really should have bookmarks.

The scripts are, well, scripts. I don't usually pay much attention to such things, but if you like that sort of thing it's all there for you.

The adventure: From a marketing standpoint, it was a pretty good idea to release the adventure in D&D 4E format. This allows curious gamers who enjoy 4E an opportunity to see what playing in the Midnight world is like. From a Midnight gamer's standpoint, it's a horrible slap in the face. FFG published one campaign adventure for Midnight, Crown of Shadows, but it was made for the 1st edition of the game (3.0 rules). They never released another adventure until now, and while it's great to have another one, it's ridiculous to me that they provide a 4e module for a game written for 3.5, even going so far as to include the 3.5 campaign core rules which are useless in playing the adventure! If this is a sign that FFG is planning on re-releasing Midnight for 4E I am disappointed, as I am not a fan of the system. I would much rather see them move into Pathfinder.

However, overall the Midnight Package is still a phenomenally good value. Excellent movie and great game!

What I expected:
A medium quality Indie film with decent effects and an okay story.
A standalone RPG with an adventure that I would maybe look at and, if I was lucky, run an adventure in.

What I got:
A movie that both looks and sounds fantastic with fun characters that brings to life a world I hadn't expected much from.
A hungry thirst for a sequel that I eagerly await!
An RPG much like Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved in that it is more of a spin-off of DnD 3.5 (a system that I greatly adore).
I greatly recommend this bundle to fans of role-playing in a dark and gritty fantasy world.

The only thing that put me of was the 4th Edition adventure. The rule book provided is under the v3.5 rules so I feel they should have made the adventure with the same system. However, I still intend on running the story, while simply changing a few stat blocks.

Wow! This movie is impressive. It really captivated me, and gave me a sense of wonder about the world of Midnight. I am very impressed they did this as the production quality was stellar (although not LoTR, but com'n money was no object there). I was slightly disappointed they didn't resolve one of the characters more fully, but that only added for my hunger for a SEQUEL! Com'n Fantasy Flight!
Technically, there were no issues, good video, good sound quality, played fine, could skip around the video quickly to rewatch parts. Also, for the movie (in two definitions), the Midnight core book, the script, and everything else included the value was quite high for the price. I'm quite satisfied with the purchase that I almost didn't make (I was on the fence about it).